What is Leadership?
Today there is apparent need to embark on a journey to search for, and understanding true meaning of leadership styles due to the current administrative-related challenges. This is particularly due to the high rates of unemployment and existence of diverse work-groups.
There is equally need to find different styles to fairly dealing with employees and tasks in the discipline of management, which seem to be surrendering its role to that of leadership. It is easy to define leadership as a style of control that is mainly concern with employees’ and overall organization’s performance. A well performing team has a successful leader steering its activities.
High performing firms therefore requires an equally aggressive and strong leadership style. This report presents points that critically contrast and compare between various aspects or styles of leadership and those of management. The handbook is a guidance that includes characteristics or models used for measuring leadership styles and strategies for upcoming managers.
Being Acquainted With Leadership
Leadership is guidance or assistance procedures mainly concern with the way people within a firm create rapport, communicate and live by the significances of life (Hargreaves, 2003). According to Hargreaves (2003), for a leadership style to be effective, it is imperative to share personal values and abilities.
The process of leadership is considerably complex due to the high expectations that people place over the issues. The anticipations are concern with personal needs, differences in believes/synergy/ energy levels, expectations, experiences, and technological advancements among other aspects.
The personal differences bring about superimposing of the mentally modelled aspects, thus placing very high expectations and challenges over the leadership style.
A good leadership style must have a reciprocating environment where the leader has needs, and the subordinates have their own different requirements with the expectation that the leader meets them. In most instances, a leadership style fails because these needs lack measurable elements or factors to meet expectations.
Common Leaderships Style
Good leadership avails chances of interactive participation of all members in the firm, regardless of their differences by categorizing issues with respect to matters of concern. According to Booyens (2008), this is a healthy leadership approach because it enables the employees and other members of the organization to critic or compels the leaders with competitive views and opinions, which are important for achievement of goals.
Positive views assist in validating and keeping the leader in a lane of reality. Dynamic dialogue cools any conflicting contemplations and maintains the cooperation between the involved parties (Booyens, 2008).
Distinction between leadership and management
Any organization needs both a leader and manager. The same person can hold both positions. The managers dominate most of the governance styles but the main differences lie between various supreme approaches to services.
- Managers have a value for results while leaders value relationships among affiliates.
- There are high regards over positions in management while this is not evident in leadership.
- Leaders take reputable high risks compared to the managers and are personal, caring and avoid copying the rules of others or the stipulated rules (Heifetz, 2004). On the other hand, the manages will often conform to existing rules and want to ensure protection of the status quo over change, thus making the leaders more innovative and ready to engage change for the better (Heifetz, 2004).
- The leaders’ style of guidance is non-functional thus inspiring and motivational compared to the management style of functionally analyzing, evaluating and solving problems from a personal perspective.
- The leadership hierarchy restrains the flow of unnecessary information, poor policies of the firm, agendas that conflict governance as well as pressures for the need to conform. This makes the style incredibly difficulty over the provision of overall directions as opposed to management (Mathias et al, 2007).
According to Heifetz (2004), the issues of leadership in organizations have revolutionized due to introduction of different age groups or other diversifications like the multicultural societies. The reference of leadership made over the decades has become obsolete because it concerns the ability to hold top management positions.
Today the top management positions and their functions are still in common usage, but current trends indicate that people have discoveries concerning the distinction between managers and leaders. The process of exercising leadership skills, styles and qualities has a different meaning of providing a vision and influence of those led into realization of coexistence and sharing of thoughts.
It is possible to define leadership style of governance in two ways. First is the ability to have considerations of various aspects in the organization such as age, gender, performance, experience, cultural and energy differences, characterized by an emphasis over good relations. In this situation, the leader is a good listener who is approachable and friendly.
This style entails openness thus enlisting the mental trust among those involved. Second is the ability to engage a leadership behaviour that directs an organization and assists in defining goals, structure and style of execution.
Position of leadership styles in the organization
One key factor that is evident today is the need to search for and understand leadership position. The main reason behind the abolition of the eminent traditional styles of administration concerns presentation. These performance levels are attainable only when the involved groups have trust of their leaders.
Trust is a pre-requisite aspect of leadership that call for those in charge to portray honesty and show concern or care for their followers’ needs and thoughts, but at the same time make certain that they remain accountable over their deeds (Booyens, 2008).
Secondly, the leader ought to honour commitments and pronouncements. Respect is an inevitable aspect of leadership in which case the leader ought to respect the opinion of others regardless of their age, gender or other differences and respond to their requests amicably and respectably owing to the thought that differences of opinion is an eminent sign of progress.
Lastly, it is important for the leaders to have a set of values, which their followers can identify with or connect to such as courageousness, reliability, integrity, competence, honesty, altruism, and fairness (Booyens, 2008).
Trust is like a pillar that runs through every aspect of leadership thus ensuring leadership success. People will take a considerable amount of time to trust and consequently, the leader should have great consistent on efforts and honest style of leadership.
Functions of leadership
- A leader must perform various functions of the organizational such us selecting people to make up the organizational structure, units or segments that control the flow of information in and out of the firm.
- Leadership also entails the ability to ensure individual and group participation in a knowledgeable manner.
- A leader must engage interpersonal characteristics, which create good working morale within the organization. She/he ought to indicate a good degree of concern about humanity and pay attention to the follower’s concerns over the leadership or other organizational aspects (Mathis et al, 2007).
- A good leader has to make quick but accurate decisions. Every time or day involves a fresh crisis requiring a solution. Ability to focus subdivided attention back to routine for business continuity is vital. For instance, the leader cannot focus on the current tasks and ignore the future aspects or consequences that can affect the firm.
- Lastly is the decisional function, in this case, a leader ought to give the impression of searching for the decisions regarding achievements of goals. Leadership entails the ability to create a compelling vision and style that reshapes future perspectives. A professional leader guides tasks through visions or ultimate powers accorded to ensure success of a process.
Those problems, concepts, ideas or actions that receive the attention determine the sustainability of the firm. In line with Daft and Marcic (2008), a good definition of leadership lies on the ability to determine aspects that deliver prosperity.
Practical Applications of Current trends of leadership styles
Beside the performance procedures, there are various policies of enhancing leadership, which include-
- Determining employment related actions and obligations through evaluation to ensure competence and personal satisfaction over the assigned field.
- Having procedures to design, evaluate and administer performance procedures that ensure unity among the group members without a reference to their experience, age, gender or other differences.
- Having rules that enhance integration of employee retreatment programs as a motivational factor and team building procedure
- Enhancing ways to monitor and evaluate the conducts and performance of the employees.
- Enforcing procedures for monitoring employees’ relationships by availing ways of getting feedbacks from them regarding the assigned duties
- Availing employees’ consultation programs regarding their performance expectations as a measure of ensuring safety and required collaboration
- Ensuring employees’ performance is highly dependent on proper communication and agreements regarding achievements.
- Enforcement of policies to ensure proper, efficient, secure, flexible and accurate ways of data collection for collaborative discussions
- Ensuring existence of rules to govern maintenance of past and present employees’ performance records and relations
- Providing regulations that facilitate the employees’ negotiations, transactions, and, compliance with the assigned obligations
- Involving some procedures for rewarding and encouraging engagement
Unlike management, leadership is arguably a style that entails a pull rather than a push. The leader must realize their strength; have a good grasp of skills and abilities to convene organizational needs such as diversities. The leader ought to be in a position of evoking positive opinions and gunner participation besides gaining credibility from the client as well as employees. A manager can still be a leader.
References
Booyens, S. (2008). Introduction to Health Service Management. South Africa, SA: Juta and Company Ltd.
Daft, R. and Marcic, D. (2008). Understanding Management. Kentucky, KY: Cengage Learning.
Heifetz, R. (2004). Leadership without Easy Answers. London, UK: Harvard University Press
Hargreaves, A. (2003). Teaching in the Knowledge Society. New York, NY: Teachers’ College Publishes.
Mathis, R., Jackson, J., & Elliott, T. (2007). Human Resource Management. Ohio, OH: Thomson Southwestern Publishers.